Some hearing impaired individuals rely on captioning systems to enjoy a movie or other theatrical presentation. Some individuals fluent in a language other than the one used in the main audio of a presentation, require subtitles to understand and enjoy the presentation. In the United States, Congress is expected to rule that exhibition theaters are required to provide systems for hearing-impaired guests. There may be a further opportunity to expand the theatrical audience by providing multiple languages in the same mode, if it can be achieved at low incremental cost.
Existing techniques provide personalized multi-language display devices, which may obtain the current stream of captions or subtitles by radio frequency (RF) or infrared (IR) flood in the theater. In the latter case, an infrared flood signal modulated by multi-channel audio program is provided to the auditorium, and an audience's headset detects the IR and demodulates the audio program. There can be multiple channels to which the demodulator can be tuned. Such devices may be expensive, prone to theft or breakage, require battery recharging, and otherwise suffer from limited operational life. Additionally, there is substantial opportunity for leakage between auditoriums in a multiplex, with IR flood signal leaking from one auditorium to another through the projection booth, or RF leaks from one room to the next through the walls. Thus, it is important for each device to have the correct auditorium channel selected, as well as the correct language.
The REAR WINDOW™ system, developed and promoted by WGBH, the Boston PBS network affiliate, provides a LED display at the rear of the auditorium, facing forward. A single stream of captions or subtitles is displayed as mirrored text on the LED panel, to be viewed by theater patrons having an adjustable, reflective plate. The reflective plate and the display are both durable and inexpensive.
Each of these approaches has become more feasible with the introduction of digital cinema servers and development of the related formats and protocols by SMPTE (specifically, ST 429-12:2008 D-Cinema Packaging—Caption and Closed Subtitle; ST 430-10:2010 D-Cinema Operations—Auxiliary Content Synchronization Protocol; and, ST 430-11:2010 D-Cinema Operations—Auxiliary Resource Presentation List; all of which are herein incorporated by reference in their entireties).
In an exhibition theater, open (on-screen) subtitles work well for translating the primary audio language of a presentation as text into a language to be read by the majority of the audience. Closed subtitles are preferred when one or more translations are needed. Also, closed captions are provided for hearing-impaired audience members, where the captions are in the same language as the primary audio language. Though “caption” is generally used to mean text in the same language as that of the primary audio presentation and “subtitle” is used to mean text translating the dialog into a language other than the primary language of the audio presentation, the terms “caption” and “subtitle” are used interchangeably in this discussion.
To facilitate understanding, identical reference numerals have been used, where possible, to designate identical elements that are common to the figures. The drawings are not to scale, and one or more features may be expanded or reduced for clarity.